Grilled Artichokes

This was one of those recipes where I let what the grocery store had in stock determine my meal. I had settled on a steak for dinner and was looking for something to go with it as a side or an appetizer. This could be either. It’s probably better suited for an appetizer, but I ate it like a side. How you serve it is up to you. Also what’s up to you is what sort of dipping sauce to serve with it. I chose some pesto, but I will list some other options at the end of this post…

Grilled Artichokes Ingredients:

Artichokes
Salt
Black pepper
Olive oil
Dipping sauce of your choice

That’s it. Nothing to this dish, but it’s great. While the ingredients are basic, the prep of the grilled artichoke takes a little work. I started with two artichokes:

The first step is to snip off the pointy, and tough, ends of the the leaves:

Don’t bother with snipping off the tips of the leaves on top:

Because you will lop off the top:

Now they should stand easily:

Grilled artichokes need to be steamed before they can go on the grill or they will be really tough. I filled my steamer pot with about an inch of water:

And added the steamer and the two artichokes. I had to lop off about an inch of the base so they would stand up under the lid:

If you don’t have the steamer piece, just stand them up in an inch of boiling water for 15 minutes:

Some people suggest squeezing half a lemon into the water to help keep the artichokes from browning. These were going straight on the grill once they were prepped so I wasn’t worried about it.

Once the artichokes have steamed for 15 minutes, place them on a cutting board to cool:

Then slice them vertically from the center of the stem:

Now for the last bit of prep. It’s time to remove the choke which is here:

A melon baller works wonders here:

And here we have not yet grilled artichokes de-choked. Or is it unchoked?:

Some coarse salt, fresh black pepper and a little olive oil on both sides:

Now they are ready for the grill. Some of you are thinking this is a lot of work, but honestly, it took less than 5 minutes of work to prep these. And while they steamed I was able to start a fire, open a beer, watch some football, drink some beer, etc.

The grill is set for two zone cooking with the coals on one side and none on the other, but that was more for the steak than it was for the artichokes.

Put the grilled artichokes directly over the coals with the outer leaves down:

After six minutes I checked the backs of the artichokes. Two weren’t browning as much and two were. The ones browning the most looked like this:

I repositioned them so the ones that were browning were in the spots of the two that weren’t and vice versa. After 10 minutes I flipped the grilled artichokes over:

Another 4-5 minutes on the flesh side down and the artichokes were ready to serve. Since I am addicted to pesto I used a pesto dipping sauce:

Flip the artichokes over and peal the inner layers out and dip in the sauce or eat plain:

The outer pieces are edible, but are only good when they are really hot. Once they cool a little they get tough and chewy. I pealed a few off when I flipped them over while I was grilling them as I was starving, but once they were inside for a couple minutes they were really tough.

You don’t have to do a dipping sauce. You can eat the layers plain. They taste really good on their own. But if you want to get creative or offer your guests more than one kind of sauce, here are some other options:

If you have any questions about the grilled artichokes, in particular if you have any recipes for dipping sauces for after the grilling, feel free to comment below or shoot me an email, and I will add your dipping sauce to the post and give you full credit for it…

If you would like to see other sides and appetizers click here. And if you would like to see other vegetarian dishes click here.

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Scott Thomas

Scott Thomas, the Original Grillin’ Fool, was sent off to college with a suitcase and a grill where he overcooked, undercooked and burned every piece of meat he could find. After thousands of failures, and quite a few successes, nearly two decades later he started a website to show step by step, picture by picture, foolproof instructions on how to make great things out of doors so that others don’t have to repeat the mistakes he’s made on the grill.

3 comments

I had the winter grilling blues so I wanted to try something different. Followed the recipe as you posted and this came out fantastic! Wanted to say thanks for you and the rest of the fools creativity and keeping us from grill boredom. Went with the Herb Butter dipping sauce and was enjoyed by all!

Thanks for all the hard work, been following the site for about 1 1/2 years and I’ve found many successes out of it.